A while back, I wrote a little about what it felt like to run out of goals, to consider giving up on one of my dreams. It's been over a year since I wrote those words and that time has now come. For exactly 25% of this entire year, I was interviewing with a company that I'd wanted to work for for a long time. I applied once three years ago but didn't make it. I waited. This year, another opportunity came my way and I applied again. I didn't make it again. I got very close but still didn't make it. For all but one of the opportunities I've encountered since I entered this profession, that has been the case. I just never seem to be quite good enough, not quite the right fit, without the right experience.
Fourteen years ago, when I first had the epiphany of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was excited and naive. Weren't we all? I didn't know what I thought I knew. But that's what inexperience is. I was understanding enough to know that I had a lot of work ahead of me, work that I would have to do on my own because there was nobody to guide me, no trodden path to follow. But I struck out on that trail into the woods with gusto empowered by the idea that if you follow your dreams with passion success will find you. I found a few hopeful paths, met a few really interesting people along the way, but as the years went by, I never quite found success the way I had hoped. I was successful in getting a job but not successful at accomplishing my goal, at making my dream come true. So I adapted my goal. I compromised hoping that my willingness to be flexible with my ideas would also be rewarded. In a way it was but ultimately what I was doing became unsatisfying.
However, after the compromise the same thing keeps happening again and again. Those rejection letters keep piling up around my feet. I found that in changing and adapting, I had gone down some paths that didn't have a way back. I got lost in those woods. One of my favorite quotes of all time is attributed to W. C. Fields, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it." That is exactly where I am today. I have tried and tried again. I've changed my approach. I've tried to change my outlook. Perhaps all of my attempts weren't fully-hearted but I forgive myself just a little for slacking now and again. It's hard to stay motivated when you keep trying to climb that wall and never making it.
So here I am, giving up on the dream I've held for almost half of my life. Maybe "giving up" is the wrong phrase to use. Perhaps I should just call it downgrading. After all, I still want to do what I love. But doing what you love for a living is truly a privilege and one that I was obviously never meant to have. Some people say they have no regrets but I certainly do. I regret that I spent the past fourteen years working for something that I will never have. It stings to say that. A lot. But ultimately I come back to W. C. Fields. There comes a time when you should really just cash in your chips and move on and I think this is my time. I don't know where I will go or what I will do but a wise hobbit once said, "The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errand meet. And whither then? I cannot say."
Monday, August 30, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Path
The Path, at least the one I'm writing about, is a game by Tale of Tales released in 2008. Rather than rehash every detail about how the game works, I'll send you to Metacritic to read all the details about the game written by all the people who got paid to write about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it right now: I don't find calling this title a game difficult at all. There are items to collect, a world to explore, and objectives to meet. The world may be dark, repetitive, slow, but that's the point. The objectives may be vague and even misleading, but that's the point. The item collection is, well it's item collection, so depending on your opinion of it, that task is pretty much the same in every game.
What I find so important about this game is that it truly is the first title I've ever played that has a feminine voice. Come to think of it, very few games I've ever played have a voice at all. And that's what has me so worked up about The Path. A huge catch 22 in the game development world is that the players want change, they want new IPs, they want fewer sequels, and they want innovative gameplay. The 22 part of the Catch is that most gamers don't buy those games that try new things, that go out on limbs. They buy the same shooter that lets you run down random hallways shooting bad guys. But I digress. The Path is none of those things. It tried some very unique things, like divulging backstories of every character when they happen upon certain objects or scenarios in the woods. But they don't find audiologs or scraps of notebooks. The stories are told only through images, more akin to the way our memories work. There are flashes of objects and a couple sentences printed on the screen that act as the inner dialogue of the character your playing, which is usually some sort of reaction to the object she's examining.
And that's where the voice enters the picture. I have never played a game that seemed to speak from a feminine viewpoint as strongly as The Path. The best part about it is that there is still interactivity, there is still mystery, I still felt that I was playing the game and not simply being told a story, but uncovering it and letting the imagery speak for itself and that in that imagery, the feminine voice was revealed. Insecurities, uncertainties, and frustrations that only females can truly understand were playing out before me. As a male player, I could empathize but understood that I could never fully know. Reading through Tale of Tales' postmortem of the game, they say that a number of players believed the game to be about rape. I don't blame anyone who may have had that interpretation. The first character I played went through a story arc that seemed very much to be about her reaction to and dealing with such a violent act. But the more I played, as I worked through all the characters, it became clear that while that may have been one story, it wasn't all of them. The wolf, to me, was acting more as a symbol of struggle, something the girls each had to face in their own ways based on the context of their ages and personalities.
While I did find the game very interesting on an intellectual level, however, I understand the backlash that was unleashed against this title by people who play a lot of games. There really isn't much to do and it is very very V E R Y S L O W. Certain aspects like being forced to walk very slowly around certain areas of the world did indeed become a bit too cumbersome for my taste. But overall, I thought The Path was an excellent step in the right direction, a definitive game that makes a compelling argument for games as art, and one that anyone who has any interest in games beyond the B-movie narratives that populate most titles should play.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it right now: I don't find calling this title a game difficult at all. There are items to collect, a world to explore, and objectives to meet. The world may be dark, repetitive, slow, but that's the point. The objectives may be vague and even misleading, but that's the point. The item collection is, well it's item collection, so depending on your opinion of it, that task is pretty much the same in every game.
What I find so important about this game is that it truly is the first title I've ever played that has a feminine voice. Come to think of it, very few games I've ever played have a voice at all. And that's what has me so worked up about The Path. A huge catch 22 in the game development world is that the players want change, they want new IPs, they want fewer sequels, and they want innovative gameplay. The 22 part of the Catch is that most gamers don't buy those games that try new things, that go out on limbs. They buy the same shooter that lets you run down random hallways shooting bad guys. But I digress. The Path is none of those things. It tried some very unique things, like divulging backstories of every character when they happen upon certain objects or scenarios in the woods. But they don't find audiologs or scraps of notebooks. The stories are told only through images, more akin to the way our memories work. There are flashes of objects and a couple sentences printed on the screen that act as the inner dialogue of the character your playing, which is usually some sort of reaction to the object she's examining.
And that's where the voice enters the picture. I have never played a game that seemed to speak from a feminine viewpoint as strongly as The Path. The best part about it is that there is still interactivity, there is still mystery, I still felt that I was playing the game and not simply being told a story, but uncovering it and letting the imagery speak for itself and that in that imagery, the feminine voice was revealed. Insecurities, uncertainties, and frustrations that only females can truly understand were playing out before me. As a male player, I could empathize but understood that I could never fully know. Reading through Tale of Tales' postmortem of the game, they say that a number of players believed the game to be about rape. I don't blame anyone who may have had that interpretation. The first character I played went through a story arc that seemed very much to be about her reaction to and dealing with such a violent act. But the more I played, as I worked through all the characters, it became clear that while that may have been one story, it wasn't all of them. The wolf, to me, was acting more as a symbol of struggle, something the girls each had to face in their own ways based on the context of their ages and personalities.
While I did find the game very interesting on an intellectual level, however, I understand the backlash that was unleashed against this title by people who play a lot of games. There really isn't much to do and it is very very V E R Y S L O W. Certain aspects like being forced to walk very slowly around certain areas of the world did indeed become a bit too cumbersome for my taste. But overall, I thought The Path was an excellent step in the right direction, a definitive game that makes a compelling argument for games as art, and one that anyone who has any interest in games beyond the B-movie narratives that populate most titles should play.
The Longest Journey
I stared and stared and stared at that electrical spark on the subway rail. It made no sense to me. Obviously there was something significant about it, something I needed to do with it. After all, the Eye made that clear. It was making fun of me, the Eye. I'd direct my attention toward the spark and it would appear again, letting me know that, hey, this was important and I'd better figure out what to do with it.
There was a key hidden in the spark. The Eye told me I should care about it.
I emptied my pockets. Nothing made immediate sense, candy wrapper, old photo of friends, a fake leaf for god's sake. (Why am I carrying a fake leaf?) Out of desperation I tried everything I had in my pockets. None of it worked by itself. Time to try the combo trick, the one where I combine everything in my pockets with everything else in my pockets to see what happens. Eventually, I figured out that I could tie a clothesline that I had been carrying around to a clamp, lower the clamp toward the spark, and pick up the key.
Thus began my Journey of the Longest variety. Only half an hour into the first chapter and already I was pixel hunting and turning to the age old strategy of trying random and ridiculous actions. Not a great sign. The Longest Journey is a game that I've seen mentioned on many "overlooked classics" lists. I'd wanted to play it when it was first released but didn't have the cash, so I waited. I waited just long enough until I couldn't find a boxed copy anywhere to save my life. So when I saw it on sale last Christmas at GOG, I decided that the $3 would be worth it.
I've now finished the game and I agree that the setting of the story, one in which a dystopian future world we might expect on earth has long been separated from a parallel dimension where magic is the rule of the day, is a great backdrop for the adventure at hand. While the world is not colored with the same minute strokes that, say, Tolkien attempted, it is still a canvas on which the details have obviously been thoroughly planned. Without a doubt, there were probably pages of history and character backstory that didn't need to be in the game. That effort did not go unnoticed during my play sessions.
However, the one fatal flaw that I believe mars the greatness of the setting, is the gameplay itself. It suffers from the mere fact that it was one of the last breaths of a dying genre. The LucasArts and Sierra adventures had also mined these same tunnels of most of their gems. The Longest Journey was simply a great story told a decade too soon. Pixel hunting and combining (in some cases) some extremely odd inventory items to cause the story to progress were two of the major nails in adventure games' coffin and The Longest Journey didn't skimp in either department. By contrast, the Penumbra series made only five or six years later was a unique revitalization, a fantastic mash-up of first-person perspective exploring, puzzle solving, and some admittedly bungled combat. If I found a dusty old lamp with a genie in it, I think one of my wishes would be that developers would pick up on the techniques that were begun in Penumbra and refine them, implement them and adapt them into more modern adventure titles, one where the puzzles actually involve combining things that make sense.
Another complaint, although much smaller, is that there are so many lines of dialogue to wade through, each and every one of which is spoken at varying levels of quality by voice actors, that the game quickly becomes and act of trying to find the one bit of information you need hidden way inside all the story bits that are only interesting window dressing. I found myself playing with my index finger hovering over the ESC key, because I could read the text faster than it was being spoken. I would get to the end of the line while the character was still mumbling half way back before I would *ESC*. The game is already long enough and it just seemed like all the spoken dialogue (especially by some egregiously slow-speaking characters) forced the game into overtime, although it probably made a great marketing bullet point on the back of the box, "200 Hours of Gameplay!". To add to the "extended gameplay" dynamic, sometimes, you have to wade through all of the dialogue options before you get to the stuff you need. That's not choice or interactivity. That's just annoying.
Truth be told, I enjoyed The Longest Journey not for the game but for the fantastic effort expended to create a truly believable fictional fantasy world. The world has some unique qualities that propel it beyond many of the adventure games of that era. It's only major flaw is the slice of time it occupies in the history of video gaming which, last I checked, is not really its fault.
There was a key hidden in the spark. The Eye told me I should care about it.
I emptied my pockets. Nothing made immediate sense, candy wrapper, old photo of friends, a fake leaf for god's sake. (Why am I carrying a fake leaf?) Out of desperation I tried everything I had in my pockets. None of it worked by itself. Time to try the combo trick, the one where I combine everything in my pockets with everything else in my pockets to see what happens. Eventually, I figured out that I could tie a clothesline that I had been carrying around to a clamp, lower the clamp toward the spark, and pick up the key.
Thus began my Journey of the Longest variety. Only half an hour into the first chapter and already I was pixel hunting and turning to the age old strategy of trying random and ridiculous actions. Not a great sign. The Longest Journey is a game that I've seen mentioned on many "overlooked classics" lists. I'd wanted to play it when it was first released but didn't have the cash, so I waited. I waited just long enough until I couldn't find a boxed copy anywhere to save my life. So when I saw it on sale last Christmas at GOG, I decided that the $3 would be worth it.
I've now finished the game and I agree that the setting of the story, one in which a dystopian future world we might expect on earth has long been separated from a parallel dimension where magic is the rule of the day, is a great backdrop for the adventure at hand. While the world is not colored with the same minute strokes that, say, Tolkien attempted, it is still a canvas on which the details have obviously been thoroughly planned. Without a doubt, there were probably pages of history and character backstory that didn't need to be in the game. That effort did not go unnoticed during my play sessions.
However, the one fatal flaw that I believe mars the greatness of the setting, is the gameplay itself. It suffers from the mere fact that it was one of the last breaths of a dying genre. The LucasArts and Sierra adventures had also mined these same tunnels of most of their gems. The Longest Journey was simply a great story told a decade too soon. Pixel hunting and combining (in some cases) some extremely odd inventory items to cause the story to progress were two of the major nails in adventure games' coffin and The Longest Journey didn't skimp in either department. By contrast, the Penumbra series made only five or six years later was a unique revitalization, a fantastic mash-up of first-person perspective exploring, puzzle solving, and some admittedly bungled combat. If I found a dusty old lamp with a genie in it, I think one of my wishes would be that developers would pick up on the techniques that were begun in Penumbra and refine them, implement them and adapt them into more modern adventure titles, one where the puzzles actually involve combining things that make sense.
Another complaint, although much smaller, is that there are so many lines of dialogue to wade through, each and every one of which is spoken at varying levels of quality by voice actors, that the game quickly becomes and act of trying to find the one bit of information you need hidden way inside all the story bits that are only interesting window dressing. I found myself playing with my index finger hovering over the ESC key, because I could read the text faster than it was being spoken. I would get to the end of the line while the character was still mumbling half way back before I would *ESC*. The game is already long enough and it just seemed like all the spoken dialogue (especially by some egregiously slow-speaking characters) forced the game into overtime, although it probably made a great marketing bullet point on the back of the box, "200 Hours of Gameplay!". To add to the "extended gameplay" dynamic, sometimes, you have to wade through all of the dialogue options before you get to the stuff you need. That's not choice or interactivity. That's just annoying.
Truth be told, I enjoyed The Longest Journey not for the game but for the fantastic effort expended to create a truly believable fictional fantasy world. The world has some unique qualities that propel it beyond many of the adventure games of that era. It's only major flaw is the slice of time it occupies in the history of video gaming which, last I checked, is not really its fault.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)